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ARTIST

Melle Smets

Melle is active as a researcher, artist and critic in public space. The contemporary landscape reflects who we are. Smets visualizes traces from the past and present to explore the relationship between man and his environment. After finishing a study Art and Public Space (OK 5) at the art academy in Arnhem in 1999, he was co-founder of the artists collective GANG. The group organised city dwelling tours, exhibitions for airports, harbours and highways. In 2005 he moved to Rotterdam where he set up shop. He founded a Dutch Highway museum, wrote a book about his experiences living in a car for 30 days and participated in a number of landart projects. Smets works as a consultant, lecturer and speaker at universities in the Netherlands. His aim is to create a broad public awareness to reflect on the contemporary landscape.
Melle was invited to participate to the COM.POST 2010 serie. For this occasion he set up the condition to experience himself how the area where DE PLAYER resides, sounds like by inviting the visually handicapped Peter Altena, blindfolded himself as well, and made a trip on the Afrikaandermarket. This tour was recorded and written down in a beautiful score and printed in the Public Sound #1: Communal Condition (released by DE PLAYER, see related releases).